Main menu

Jimmie Johnson's car fails post-qualifying inspection, sent from front row to rear of NASCAR field

July 12, 2013

It didn't take the Hendrick team long to fix whatever was wrong with Jimmie Johnson's car on Friday. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

It didn't take Hendrick Motorsports long to make its No. 48 Chevrolet legal after it was disqualified following Friday qualifying at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Jimmie Johnson was second behind pole-winner Brad Keselowski (135.922 mph) until his time was disallowed because the car's front was too low. He was penalized to start a dead-last 43rd in Sunday afternoon's Camping World RV 301.

With the car fixed, re-inspected and cleared by officials, Johnson was sixth-fastest in Saturday morning's first practice session and fifth-fastest in the second. Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch were 1-2-3 in the first session, with Brian Vickers, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kenseth 1-2-3 in the final session.

On Friday afternoon, Johnson's crew scrambled just to get their car through inspection and into the qualifying line. Crew chief Chad Knaus had to trim 1/16th of an inch off the right-side skirt and take a pound from the car's overall weight. “We had to go through (inspection) twice and that's usually big trouble for teams,” Johnson said after qualifying, but before he knew his time was being disallowed. “We were able to get it done quickly and get out (for his qualifying lap) just in time. It added a lot of stress.”

Much later, during a quickly called media session, Knaus said the front end of the No. 48 car was reassembled incorrectly when crewmen switched from practice trim to qualifying. The entire front end was found too low -- a fairly common violation; not unprecedented at all -- when the car went through post-qualifying tech.

“We were able to get the car right (for qualifying), but it wasn't exactly right,” Knaus said, emphasizing exactly. “We weren't going to know (what the problem was) until after qualifying, when we started tearing it apart. There was a mis-assembly issue with the left front and that's why the heights were so messed up when we went through initial inspection. It came back to bite us.”

The car's left side was high and its right side was low in pre-qualifying tech. Knaus said his crew immediately recognized the problem, but didn't correct it properly. “We saw there was an issue,” he said. “We knew there was something that just wasn't jiving right. We were able to get through tech, but the car settled a little bit afterward.

“At a track like New Hampshire, you run a lot of shock and you run a lot of front (spring) rebound. It takes a little bit of time for the car to come back up (to legal height). With the way we're measuring the heights now, you don't really have a lot of room for error, and we just had a little error.”

With Johnson dispatched to the rear of the grid, the top 10 starters for the 301-lap, 318-mile race on Sunday afternoon are Keselowski and Kurt Busch on Row 1, Earnhardt and Kyle Busch on Row 2, Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards on Row 3, Denny Hamlin and Kasey Kahne on Row 4 and Jeff Burton and Juan Pablo Montoya on Row 5. Of those 10, all but Montoya broke the track's previous qualifying record of 135.232 mph, set by Ryan Newman in 2011.

Jamie McMurray qualified 11th, but damaged his primary car in a practice crash. Its left-rear tire blew as he entered turn three, and he slapped the outside wall. He was optimistic his Ganassi-Earnhardt-Sabates team could repair the No. 1 Chevrolet and start 11th rather than use the backup car and start from the rear of the field.

“We're going to try to fix it because we qualified 11th and it's really hard to pass here,” McMurray said. “I thought our car was really good in practice, definitely the best car I've had at Loudon so we want to race this car. It's mainly cosmetic, so if they get the (rear) crush panels out and get it presentable, we're going to race this car tomorrow. The right-rear quarter panel is going to be the most critical thing because it was torn up pretty good.”